29
votes
Can I brine meat after cooking it?
It won't do anything useful.
Brining works on raw meat by denaturing some of the proteins inside the cells so they gel and hold tightly onto their water. It also gets tasty salt in.
Cooked meat has ...
- 47.5k
19
votes
Is it possible to make taste of raw oily salmon less pronounced?
My suggestion would be if you don't like the taste don't buy the fish in the first place, however if you have bought fish and then found out it's too strong a flavor there are a few things you can do:
...
- 75.4k
14
votes
Accepted
Can salted capers be un-salted?
Yes.
Brined capers also have a lot of salt, so you're not really trying to remove the salt, just dissolve it a bit. The way I've done this is to simply take out about 1/4 of the capers, add a ...
- 61.2k
11
votes
Is beef ever brined?
People often marinate beef cuts like flank steak or skirt steak.
Dry brining (pre-salting) beef is pretty common, such as for prepping many steaks.
Wet brining is also pretty common -- corned beef ...
- 1,947
9
votes
Can I brine meat after cooking it?
You cannot brine after cooking but you could slice the meat and place it in a jus.
You see this commonly with "Italian Beef" and "French Dip" sandwiches. Take whatever drippings you have left and add ...
- 91
9
votes
Accepted
Could you brine steak?
There certainly are proponents of brining beef to impact texture and flavor. In my looking across the internets, it appears that dry "brining" is more common than wet, but both are used for steaks. ...
- 73.8k
9
votes
Could you brine steak?
For tender meat like steak, brining is generally not needed (nor recommended). However I can see some applications where you'd want to delicately brine a thick cut of a steak by submerging the meat ...
- 4,286
7
votes
How do I fix pickles that are too sour?
If you are going to do anything, do it when you are ready to put the pickles in the fridge again, not when canning - acid keeps the canned pickles safe.
So - leave them really sour as canned. When ...
- 15.7k
7
votes
Accepted
Can I use chicken brine as a base to make a broth?
Tasty and quite salty, YES, (the taste will be salt!) with need to water down are probably GROSS understatements. You gain nothing trying to save/reuse it. Discard it! It will have very little flavor ...
- 2,281
7
votes
Is it possible to make taste of raw oily salmon less pronounced?
I work on a gillnet boat in Alaska for a few weeks each summer. Here are some tips:
Get the freshest fish you can. I know you asked about the curing process specifically, but it all starts here. ...
- 171
6
votes
How can I effectively time a short thawing and brining of a a turkey?
I can't remember how many times I've remembered to take out the turkey much to late for a full proper defrost. Yes, you can probably thaw it in cold water. But I would go a step further if you're ...
- 11.2k
6
votes
Is beef ever brined?
Yes. To make pastrami or corned beef, one must brine the meat for about a week. Corning, brining, and pickling are all variants of the same process - curing meat in a sugar- and/or salt-water ...
- 61
6
votes
Accepted
Fermented Carrots
For the record, your brine was most likely fine. It's normal for lacto-ferments to get cloudy. As for replacing the brine, I would use another batch of salt-brine, and possibly toss in some fresh ...
- 5,204
6
votes
Accepted
Are long brines neccesary for sous vide?
Typically brines are for tenderizing and penetrating flavour into the meat.
The use of the brine would be to break down the tough meat
Though a sous vide does tenderize mildly with the long cooking ...
- 1,319
5
votes
Accepted
Can you brine frozen meat?
No, you can't. Or at least, you won't get the result you're really looking for.
Water needs to be able to move through the meat for the salt and flavorings to be transported to the inner cells of ...
- 80k
5
votes
Brining vs Salting - what's going on?
The question starts with an inaccurate assumption. Salt does NOT necessarily result in "drier steak." Salting a steak will draw some moisture out of the outermost layer of meat initially. That's ...
- 32.1k
5
votes
Accepted
Accidentally bought a "butter basted" turkey. Can/should I still brine it?
Pre-basted turkey is indeed already brined. You can double check this by looking on the ingredient list of the turkey packaging and you should see a salt or vinegar solution listed.
You can still ...
- 2,638
5
votes
Himalayan salt in a brine
No, not really. There are plenty of curing recipes for pastrami that do not use curing salts and you can use Himalayan for them. It is really just rock salt with some iron oxide (rust) in it. Some ...
- 8,673
5
votes
Why do home-made pickles float in the jar, but commercial pickles don't?
I've noticed in my experience if I cut the vegetables and put them in a bowl with salt water for a couple of hour in the fridge. Then remove and rinse for 3 to 5 minutes before canning, they don't ...
- 51
4
votes
Brining Turkey - 4 Days in Fridge - Partially Grey
The color is likely due to other intensely colored ingredients in your marinade, notably balsamic and pomegranates. They can discolor other items so I wouldn't be too surprised if this happened to the ...
- 14.9k
4
votes
Are there ingredients I should avoid in a brine?
The short answer is to just stick to salt, because nothing else is going to meaningfully impact the brining process. But there are certainly some things that would be actively harmful.
Your question ...
- 2,133
4
votes
Accepted
Which sugar for brining?
For a brine, no it doesn't really matter, except that granulated sugar will dissolve more nicely than raw sugar. The sugar is for flavor more than anything else, though it does help the brine some. ...
- 912
4
votes
How much and what seasoning to should I use in a turkey brine?
Before I try to answer some of your core question with my best from the gut answer, I want to address a bit of an issue with the question itself. Since I am the author of the question and answer upon ...
- 58.5k
4
votes
Why do home-made pickles float in the jar, but commercial pickles don't?
Most likely commercial pickles are preserved by an accurate pasteurisation and ascorbic acid or other chemical preservatives so that the "brine" contains much less salt as compared to your homemade ...
- 834
4
votes
Accepted
Is it ok if there is brine on top of my sauerkraut but not in the middle and bottom portion of my jar while fermenting?
If there’s brine on top, there is definitely brine in the middle and bottom. Gravity sees to that.
It’s likely that during the active fermentation, enough gas has built up in these areas that it looks ...
- 26.8k
3
votes
Is beef ever brined?
In a manner of speaking, kashering is a form of brining, albeit one meant to remove blood from the meat, rather than to flavour it. Despite the specialisation of the link, kashering is done for all ...
- 347
3
votes
What happens if I brine my turkey for 2 days?
I have brined mine over night and also like 2 to 3 days. I have to say the majority of the recipies that I read all say to brine it over nite, but the turkey that I brined for 2 to 3 days was the best ...
- 31
3
votes
Is it safe to thaw chicken to have it brined and then freeze again?
In this case I would err on the side of safety and advise against refreezing the chicken for one reason - it was thawed in water for a couple of hours. Had it been thawed in the refrigerator it would ...
- 18.3k
3
votes
Can you cut cucumbers when you make them in brine?
I don't see how it would change the process. Besides, I've seen the same pickled fermented cucumbers cut, although lengthwise. However you cut them, it will be fine.
- 3,963
3
votes
Accepted
Does marinating hinder brining?
First: the information that "marinades only penetrate 1/8 inch" appears to be entirely from the show America's Test Kitchen (ATK); I reviewed multiple articles on it on the internet, and all of them ...
- 61.2k
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